State Representative Maureen Bauer issued the following statement in reaction to the unintentional death of 1-year-old Kylin Brooks due to access to an unsecured firearm:
“Today, my heart aches for the family of Kylin Brooks as they grieve this unimaginable loss. Yet another child has lost their life due to a firearm being improperly stored in a home where children are present. While I extend my sincere condolences, I also grieve that this tragedy was completely preventable.
“Since 2020, there have been 16 unintentional shooting incidents involving minors in St. Joseph County, with six of those resulting in fatalities. I call on elected officials to recognize the need for common-sense, safe storage legislation. We must continue to promote responsible gun ownership in our state, and require firearms to be properly stored to prevent children from gaining across to a deadly weapon, like the loaded handgun left under a pillow that killed Kylin.
“This year, I worked on a now-enacted law which requires all Indiana public schools to send home public safety information about how to safely store a firearm in a home where children are present. This will help promote safe home environments, and help educate parents and caretakers of best practices to properly store a firearm out of a child’s reach.
“The South Bend Police Department will continue to provide free gun locks at their headquarters located at 701 W Sample St. — no questions asked. It is my hope that our community will not have to mourn the loss of another child due to access to an unsecured firearm.”
4 comments
People are free moral agents. Some of them will not follow any rules, especially coming from the likes of Ms Bauer regardless how good they sound or how well they would protect if followed. Sadly, the vast majority of those youths she laments being shot and killed are older teens that also cannot legally own or carry a firearm. People like Bauer like to claim that 18 and 19 year olds are children. My heart breaks more when an elected official trades on fear and the deaths of others in a pursuit of laws that violate her oath of office.
While I credit Rep Bauer with proposing educational materials and support the gun lock program (one is already included with EVERY new gun), the Democrat notion of “common sense” gun laws are generally nonsense. In the case of their “common sense” safe storage legislation they are trying to put through a one-size-fits-all mandate that renders defensive guns in the house into useless paperweights for lawful Citizens.
Looking at the politics of the mass shooters, I trust my NRA educated children to be more responsible with guns than I would any Democrat lawmaker.
The government continues to work to make legally owned firearms irrelevant while the criminals continue unimpeded. Making changes where it matters and would make the most impact are not the goal…disarming law abiding citizens so they can tell you what to do is.
The criminals will always have their weapons, the government only wants to disarm the law abiding. They obviously have something in mind that would need you to be disarmed to accomplish. An armed people will never willingly load themselves into cattle cars bound for the reeducation centers.
Also…Maurine is a DDDD Democrat. Nice that was not in the article. Gun grabbing libs grabbing guns. Nothing to see here…do it for the children…it will all be better when you are in the camps wishing you had done something to stop them.
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat.”
-Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956